Planning paradigms: contradictions and synthesis

This paper uses the dialectical method to characterize planning paradigms as synthetic\u27 responses to the competing views, or theses and antitheses, subsumed in the larger processes of historical change from physical planning to social, economic, policy and cultural planning. It turns out that the dialectical processes characterize a whole spectrum of theoretical, conceptual, metaphorical and methodological developments in planning. The paper concludes by positing the dialectically changing and integrating paradigms tenable in reconciling the competing views of planning theory and practice. -from Autho